In another old house in Oxford, too, her coming made delight. She spent many long hours beside the Master of Beaumont’s fire, gathering fresh light on the ways of scholarship and scholars. The quarrels of the learned had never hitherto come her way. Her father had never quarrelled with anybody. But the Master—poor great man!—had quarrelled with so many people! He had missed promotions which should have been his; he had made discoveries of which others had got the credit; and he kept a quite amazing stock of hatreds in some pocket of his vast intelligence. Constance would listen at first to the expression of them in an awed silence. Was it possible the world contained such mean and treacherous monsters? And why did it matter so much to a man who knew everything?—who held all the classics and all the Renaissance in the hollow of his hand, to whom “Latin was no more difficile, than to a blackbird ’tis to whistle”? Then, gradually, she began to have the courage to laugh; to try a little soft teasing of her new friend and mentor, who was at once so wonderful and so absurd. And the Master bore it well, could indeed never have too much of her company; while his white-haired sister beamed at the sight of her. She became the child of a childless house, and when Lady Langmoor sent her peremptory invitations to this or that country mansion where she would meet “some charming young men,” Connie would reply—“Best thanks, dear Aunt Langmoor—but I am very happy here—and comfortably in love with a gentleman on the sunny side of seventy. Please don’t interfere!”
Only with Herbert Pryce was she ever thorny in these days. She could not forgive him that it was not till his appointment at the Conservative Central Office, due to Lord Glaramara’s influence, was actually signed and sealed that he proposed to Alice. Till the goods had been delivered, he never finally committed himself. Even Nora had underrated his prudence. But at last one evening he arrived at Medburn House after dinner with the look of one whose mind is magnificently made up. By common consent, the drawing-room was abandoned to him and Alice, and when they emerged, Alice held her head triumphantly, and her lover was all jocosity and self-satisfaction.
“She really is a dear little thing,” he said complacently to Connie, when the news had been told and excitement subsided. “We shall do capitally.”
“Enfin?” said Connie, with the old laugh in her eyes. “You are quite sure?”
He looked at her uneasily.
“It never does to hurry these things,” he said, rather pompously. “I wanted to feel I could give her what she had a right to expect. We owe you a great deal, Lady Constance—or—perhaps now—I may call you Constance?”
Constance winced, and pointedly avoided giving him leave. But for Alice’s sake, she held her tongue. The wedding was to be hurried on, and Mrs. Hooper, able for once to buy new frocks with a clear conscience, and possessed of the money to pay for them, was made so happy by the bustle of the trousseau that she fell in love with her prospective son-in-law as the cause of it. Ewen Hooper meanwhile watched him with mildly shrewd eyes, deciding once more in his inner mind that mathematicians were an inferior race.
Not even to Nora—only to Mrs. Mulholland, did Constance ever lift the veil, during these months. She was not long in succumbing to the queer charm of that lovable and shapeless person; and in the little drawing-room in St. Giles, the girl of twenty would spend winter evenings, at the feet of her new friend, passing through various stages of confession; till one night, Mrs. Mulholland lifted the small face, with her own large hand, and looked mockingly into the brown eyes:
“Out with it, my dear! You are in love with Douglas Falloden!”
Connie said nothing. Her little chin did not withdraw itself, nor did her eyes drop. But a film of tears rushed into them.